Mr. Rivera for some reason felt compelled to defend Nintendo’s intellectual property when they apparently weren’t even interested in such a minor case.

The fact that Mr. Rivera was able to obtain the copyright to Mr. Hartger’s works so easily (and presumably for free) indicates that if Mr. Dudley had the same idea, he would have been immune to Mr. Rivera’s approach. (And how much “stealing” is really going on when the author gives away copyright to any old person who asks?)

Does Mr. Rivera’s collusion with Mr. Hartger represent an “unholy alliance”? I mean, Hartger facilitates the “theft”* of ROM’s by distributing the emulator that Mr. Dudley allegedly stole – so how does this measurably protect Nintendo’s copyrights?

You are my hero Rafael Rivera. You defended the powerless Nintendo corporation against some hack. Now Nintendo will make millions as Windows Phone users, noting the lack of Nintendo emulator software for the device in the Windows Phone Marketplace, go out and buy Nintendo products.

I’d only really heard good things about Mr. Rivera before this. Seems at the very least that he’s a statist with some serious issues determining priorities in life.

*Note: I have a hard time accepting that creating a copy of an idea or object at your own expense constitutes theft. The ROMs were not “taken” since neither Nintendo or their customers were deprived of their use.

Microsoft did a really great job of integrating the features I use most right into the core phone OS, so honestly, I spend most of my time using built-in Windows Phone functionality – but sometimes I have a need to get off the reservation. Here are some Windows Phone apps I recommend checking out (and you can download them to your phone from the links provided)…

For a few months I’ve been brainstorming with my brother to find some kind of dashboard camera mount for my mobile phone so I could shoot 720p video while driving – without having to fuss with holding a camera – just set-it and forget it.

After looking at a variety of solutions that weren’t very good, I told him maybe I’d just get a Flip cam. The quality isn’t incredible, but it’d do the trick. That’s when he told me about GoPro cameras – I’d seen them before in reality shows on cable but it never dawned on me that they’d be affordable. Turns out the GoPro HD Hero2 retails for $299.99 (seems to be some price fixing going on because I never saw it for even a penny less online). Compare that to my MiniDV Sony DTR-TRV30 camcorder I bought a few years ago for $1,500 or so at the time and this seems affordable by comparison.

Amazingly, in addition to being able to shoot 1080p HD video, it also has some nice features for artsy photos, like the ability to take ten 11 Megapixel photos in one second via “Burst” mode, shoot high frame-rate video for slow-motion, and even shoot time-lapse videos. Something odd about the GoPro is that it doesn’t have a screen to show you what you’re recording – which is interesting because you just kind of turn it on and forget about it rather than experiencing life through the viewfinder as can happen with other cameras.

One of the things that really struck me about the video I had seen filmed with GoPro cameras was the quality of work shot by novices – which is really the point of this post, to show you the first two videos I recorded with my GoPro – ever. Both were shot using the suction cup mount I bought with the camera (waterproof and supposedly secure up to 200mph). The commute to work was shot with the camera suction cupped to my car’s moon roof. The return home it was suction cupped to the windshield under the rear-view mirror.

Anyway, here they are (if you can watch at 1080p full-screen!):

GoPro HD Hero2 1080p internally suction cup mounted to windshield

I picked the music by looking for something fitting in my music collection (ZunePass) that matched the length of the video. Hopefully the music isn’t a distraction – and I think in parts both of the videos sync up nicely with the music. Not bad for video that was simply sped-up 4x and not really edited (I added the music and sped up the video using Windows Live Movie Maker).